The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,41

my own construction business instead. It took five years for my wife to convince me to join up with the county as a volunteer paramedic. I still get cold feet every time I go to a sick call.”

“I don’t get the point,” she said.

“The point is, you don’t pick this profession, it picks you. I had no choice but to come back.”

“You make it sound like a calling from God.”

“It is.”

“Well, I’m calling God back and telling him I don’t want it.”

She jumped as Gerald’s pager sounded again, spilling some of the coffee in her mug.

CHAPTER SIX

Wednesday Afternoon

Of course it was a sick call.

Gerald rolled his eyes as he swallowed the last of his coffee and tied his boots on. He told Lucy to look up the address they were going to in the map book as they got into the ambulance.

She picked up the map book and flipped through the pages. “How do you work this thing?” she asked.

Gerald laughed. She hadn’t meant it as a joke. “There’s an index in the back. Just find the street there,” he said.

Soon she was getting carsick as they sped down the tiny streets and flew over potholes.

“Goddammit! Gerald, would you please not go over every single bump,” she said, trying to make herself act normal. And normally she would have yelled at a man she barely knew. “Take the next left,” she said, checking the map.

She looked over at him. He was tapping his finger in time with the radio, some Eagles’ song. A few minutes ago, she’d been quitting; now, she was running another call. How had that happened?

They pulled up to the house as Gerald picked up the radio and said, “Santa Fe, Piñon Medic One on scene.” He got out of the ambulance and pulled on his latex gloves.

Lucy didn’t move from the passenger seat. “You know, I think I’m just going to stay here,” she said.

“I need you inside.”

She took a deep breath and got out of the ambulance.

In front of a newish, adobe-colored stucco house with perfect landscaping was a woman, probably in her early seventies, dressed in red stretch pants, a long lime-green T-shirt, and a white baseball cap.

“Are you the one who called 911?” Gerald asked.

The woman nodded. “It’s my friend. She didn’t show up at my house this morning. We were supposed to go to Hobby Lobby.”

Gerald and Lucy reached the front door. It was locked. Gerald called out, “It’s the fire department,” several times. The old woman reached into her pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and thrust them into Lucy’s hand. “Here, take these fucking things. I lost my glasses so I can’t open the door myself. That’s why I called you.”

Lucy found the right key on the set and unlocked the door and pushed it open. All three of them were in the foyer before a faint smell hit them. It was like a staleness in the air. Lucy glanced at Gerald. She guessed what the odor was, even though she had never smelled it before. She wanted to go back to the ambulance. Hell, she wanted to go home. Be anyplace but here.

“Ma’am, could you do us a huge favor and stay just outside the front door here. It would really help. Thanks,” Gerald said.

The woman put her hands on her hips, looked Gerald up and down, and said, “Like hell I will.”

“Ma’am, we really need you to stay here.”

The old woman snorted as she stomped outside. Gerald started in and Lucy had no choice but to follow. The house was decorated in early grandma—pictures of smiling children and grandchildren hung on the walls. On coffee tables were lopsided vases and candy bowls made by small hands. They wandered through the dark house, which was stifling. The heat must have been set at eighty.

Gerald occasionally called out, “Ma’am? Ma’am, it’s the paramedics,” but they didn’t get an answer. Lucy tried not to think about the reason for that.

They found her splayed over an easy chair, her head on the floor and her legs sticking up over the back of the chair. She had been dead for a while. Her skin was mottled and her eyes were rolled back. Lucy barely heard Gerald talking in the background.

“I wonder what killed her,” Gerald said to himself. “We’ll have to get a medical history. Maybe an MI. Stroke. Anything. Weird positioning of the body. I guess she fell that way.” He walked over to the woman to feel for a pulse.